profile Tom Johnston
COURTESY: THE FRANKLIN JOHNSTON GROUP
[ by jill doczi ]
The Franklin Johnston Group has become the most experienced new multifamily management and development company in America.
Tom Johnston, a founding partner and chief development officer for The Franklin Johnston Group, has spent 27 of his 34-year career in partnership with Wendell Franklin, and later with Taylor Franklin, and Steve Cooper (retired) establishing one of the most active and successful development teams on the East Coast. In addition to his role on the company’s executive leadership team, he has led the development efforts for the company and successfully completed over 40 apartment communities with an aggregate value of $500 million. Johnston hails from Northern Virginia in Herndon where his family still lives nearby. His father, a former biologist/writer, and mother, a former school teacher, helped foster the determination and positive outlook he has had throughout his career. “My father was the one to teach me to dream big,” said Johnston. His family activities also played a part in his choice of colleges. They vacationed each year in Virginia Beach and he chose Old Dominion University (ODU) in Norfolk both because of the proximity to the beach and he had friends attending there. While at ODU he changed his major slightly to focus on commercial real estate based on the influence of a great real estate professor and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in business administration. “I developed a fondness for commercial real estate in general my sophomore year at ODU and changed my major to tailor around that,” said Johnston. The choice to focus on real estate paved the way for his next few career moves. Prior to his tenure with S.L. Nusbaum Realty Company, he worked for the Virginia Housing Development Authority and GA Partners/ Arthur Anderson. He used every career move he made as an opportunity to learn useful information for his next steps. At GA Partners/Arthur Anderson he learned about the economics and market factors by working with development companies around the United States. He learned about financing while working at the Virginia Housing Development Authority. A few years later he was working on a loan with a development company and they convinced him to come work for a large commercial real estate firm in Norfolk where he focused on learning the development of apartment communities. This led to three of the employees forming a property management company in 2013 to manage the properties they owned. This led to his permanent settlement in the area. “I always wanted to come back but was skeptical that an opportunity as big as I was looking for would be available there rather than in a big city,” said Johnston. “But the opportunity did come and I jumped on it and never looked back.” They determined the number of apartments they managed would not generate the income they needed so they decided to take on the management of other properties for families and companies. Currently they manage over 20,000 apartment locations from Rhode Island to Florida. The management side of the company focuses not only on value and cashflow, but Johnston says much of their success also comes from quality product, employees, maintenance and superior customer service providing a basic cyclical positive formula. “If we hire really good people who take care of our residents then those boulevard | aug-oct 2021
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